I hate the Prius, I can't wait for this dumb little car to die, why? I'm a car guy at heart and the american love affair with cars is still alive in me. I love that they are making new cool cars, we went nearly thirty years without much quite honestly but what I don't love is the Prius. Its ugly and dumb in my opinion. If you own one well you may have not really known what you were getting so lets start with what your reasoning was.
"I wanted to save money on gas." well how long do you have to own that little thing before it pays for itself? lets be honest the upfront cost will probably never be realized in actual gas savings. calculate the cost over the price of another decent millage car then take the difference in millage and figure out your monthly savings then factor the number of years it will take driving it to pay the difference. don't cheat though you must figure in the cost of electricity and battery replacement. its all about total cost getting down the road. 23 grand for a Prius and 50 mpg (yeah right) verses something else that gets mid 30s to low 40s mpg for as little as 12 to 16 grand. in reality you may not need to replace the battery but after 150k it could be a real threat, so it could be another 4k to the price of getting down the road.
"I wanted to help clean up the environment." Ask yourself this- how much energy and pollutants were put out to dig up the metals that make your batteries? where did they have to ship them before they got to you? where do they go when they're dead? Truth is by the time you plug in that little bugger for your first clean drive you already polluted the environment more than if you had just bought a feakin SUV and drove it around the world a couple times. Not to mention where is your electricity coming from? burning coal is the probable answer or was it a dam (how good are those for the environment?) or maybe Nuclear (not such a good idea either).
"I wanted to use less gas." What kind of millage does it get when under a load, if the little electric motor never kicks in your actually getting about 17 miles to the gallon. I drive a full size truck and thats what I get. yup, push it to its limit around 75 mph and you will never see any savings at all.
In reality people often make decisions without knowing the real facts, if you want to save our environment- think and research first before you throw your cash away on an ugly polluting little devil like the Prius. electric is not the answer make the switch to CNG its clean and abundant. I recommend buying a used already converted vehicle. its reduce, reuse and recycle all in one. at our current price of 1.27 a gallon I save 2.32 per gallon against the 3.59 for regular gas, that adds up fast! and I only paid 5500 for my truck. I save money, help the environment and drive an F250 4x4. sure its ugly but hey I can tow your Prius out of a snow bank for ya.
p.s. we're both getting down the road for about 7 cents a mile. thats a Prius at its full rated 50 mpg highway.
just my two cents on it.
(edit)
so I did some math. if you bought a Prius for $23000 instead of a decent mileage car for $16000 getting mid 30s mpg- at current gas prices it would take 18.9 years to break even, at this point you will be over 226800 miles and most likely need battery replacement for another $4000 so now you would need to drive it another 10.8 yrs to break even at which point yo will be at 356400 miles and need another battery replacement at which point you will have owned the car for almost 30 years just trying to break even not even saving any money yet.
the new hundai's are getting in the 40 plus mpg and an Elantra starts just under $18000 and the Accent $14500 and last time I checked the warranty is much better.
